Project Category: Development

The Air, the Sea, and the Cloud

Posted on November 19, 2020

Overseeing Seattle’s seaport and Seattle-Tacoma International Airport (SEA-TAC), the Port of Seattle is a government agency that sits at the intersection of travel and commerce. Described as “one of the Pacific Northwest’s leading economic engines,” the Port of Seattle has historically received over 30,000 inquiries, concerns, suggestions, compliments, and complaints that have informed Port policies, capital improvement projects, community engagement endeavors, and recreational offerings like cruises.

The Port is on a mission to solidify its place as an international powerhouse in the realms of transit, commerce, and customer satisfaction, and it relies on correspondence from locals and visitors and travelers (hereafter, “constituents”) to do so.

However, staff’s ability to collect this outreach and act upon it accordingly had become increasingly limited by outdated and disparate technology.

Ready to tackle this challenge, enter the Catalyst team of Salesforce CRM and Marketing Specialists.

Setting the Stage: The Who’s, the Why’s, and the What’s

This project encompassed approximately 50 users within – and the business processes across – three domains within the Port of Seattle that manage operations for both the maritime and aviation factions: Commission Services (CS), Airport Customer Experience (ACE), and External Relations (ER).

CS supports the decision-making body of the Port, which is the five elected Port of Seattle Commissioners, in managing outreach, policy, and budgeting.
ER acts as the communication and public relations wing of the Port, overseeing newsletter distribution, email campaigns, and in-person and virtual events.
ACE works to improve the traveler experience for those flying to and from Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. In years’ past, there have been, on average, 50 million flyers annually.

Catalyst began our descent onto – and set sail with – the Port of Seattle in September 2019.

The legacy state of the Port’s technical ecosystem was deeply uncentralized, using seven legacy platforms concurrently. It was time-consuming for staff to tab between these different platforms throughout the day. These applications did not communicate with each other, compromising data integrity and undermining the ability to complete duplicate checks on information. Having these different systems also made it hard to standardize information for public-facing FAQs, as well as internal reference.

Salesforce was also a part of this array of platforms but had not been maintained or updated in a way that enabled the Port to take full advantage of the platform for several years.

The Port knew change was necessary.

The Catalyst team implemented a Salesforce solution that now acts as a centralized hub for the three domains to manage correspondence from constituents and fellow Port staff. Let’s now take a closer look at how CS, ACE, and ER are using Salesforce, particularly the Service Cloud, Einstein artificial intelligence, Marketing Cloud, and Social Studio products. For added convenience, our team integrated Salesforce with Microsoft Azure Active Directory, enabling staff to access Salesforce with their Microsoft Outlook credentials, eliminating the need to remember yet another unique log-in. We also integrated Tableau with Salesforce for more advanced reporting.

A Closer Look at Commission Services (CS)

CS is leveraging Salesforce Service Cloud to manage constituents’ e-mail correspondence with the five elected Port Commissioners. Salesforce has centralized constituent correspondence and contact information on the backend, enabling staff to provide more timely responses that can consider a constituent’s entire history of outreach to the Commissioners for added context.

Using one of the branded email templates coming out of Service Cloud, CS is equipped to handle a variety of categories of constituent outreach for each Commissioner. Similarly, they can also assign “tags” to certain cases of particularly high priority or those related to a timely concern.

For example, let’s say the Seattle area is impacted by wildfire, and 700 constituents submit concerns about safe travel, water quality, and trade implications as a result. In the legacy system, CS staff had to manually sift through Outlook and individually collect the 700+ constituents’ contact information to respond. Now, with Salesforce, CS can choose to label each of these concerns with a “wildfire” tag and then send an email en masse directly from the Service Cloud user interface with updates, restrictions, and safety tips to the constituents who submitted a case assigned a wildfire tag.

In turn, Salesforce has optimized CS staff time and productivity without compromising the quality of information concerned constituents can receive.

CS is also using Tableau for its reporting to identify patterns in the locations for which complaints are submitted. For example, Tableau can illuminate if there’s an uptick in complaints concentrated around Pier 66 and flag for staff if it’s a site of high concern and priority.

A Closer Look at Airport Customer Experience (ACE) at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport

First and foremost, the Catalyst team updated ACE’s instance of Service Cloud, running on the outdated Salesforce Classic interface, into the more intuitive Salesforce Lightning offering more robust functionality.

On the public-facing side, constituents can now contact ACE with questions, complaints, concerns, compliments, and comments about their experience at SEA-TAC through social media, live agent web chat, email, voicemail, text (SMS/MMS), and web form.

Regardless of the channel of intake, all correspondence routes to the Salesforce Service Cloud backend as a “case.” To minimize the need to tab between platforms, ACE service agents can respond to all correspondence directly within the Service Cloud user interface,

As is the case for CS, ACE benefits from the 360-degree view of the constituent Salesforce provides. The backend houses a constituent’s entire history of outreach on their contact record.

Since go-live, across all channels of case intake for ACE, there has been a 16.24% decrease in time for case resolution for SEA-TAC travelers compared to the same time period pre-go-live in 2019.

ACE and Artificial Intelligence

Let’s revisit that concept of tagging we first discussed with CS.

From “This security line is taking forever,” to, “Nobody at this gate is wearing a mask,” there’s several categories of outreach that travelers passing through SEA-TAC can submit to ACE that warrant follow-up.

ACE alone has historically received upwards of 12,000 cases a year, so it would be time-consuming to manually vet, triage, and assign each case a category upon entering Service Cloud. This is all the more true as this number of cases is expected to rise with the new channels of intake introduced through our implementation.

Assessing the volume of cases by category is an insightful report for leadership to identify areas causing concern. To be mindful of team time and capacity without compromising the importance of categorization, the Catalyst team implemented Einstein, Salesforce’s artificial intelligence product, to train the system to categorize by way of machine learning.

Let’s call out a few things on this contact record. We can see the constituent’s email in the “Correspondence” component, as well as Knowledge Articles that may help the customer service agent address this inquiry. We also can see Einstein case categorization at play in assigning this as a “TSA Precheck” case. Also note the entire case submission history of our contact Rosa is included for additional contact about who this constituent is and what matters to her.

We trained this system to assign the correct permutation of category and sub-category using 135,000+ legacy cases. In total, there is now a standardized set of 30 categories and 100+ sub-categories.

ACE and Case Deflection

We’ve discussed what happens when a case enters Service Cloud, but also important to note are the mechanisms in place to deflect case creation and offer self-service.

Our web designers built a mobile-responsive web form, hosted on SEA-TAC’s website, through which constituents can submit inquiries, complaints, and concerns. However, the intent of this web form is to deflect cases.

For example, let’s say a traveler at SEA-TAC is trying to learn more about rideshare guidelines to coordinate a ride after their flight. This web form first appears as a “Frequently Asked Questions” search bar. Upon typing in the phrase “ride pickup” in the search, the constituent will be presented with a drop-down list with relevant articles based on the keywords inputted.

The constituent has the option to upvote articles as helpful. If they select, “No, these articles weren’t helpful,” they are presented with the true web form to submit additional details. These details will be routed into Service Cloud as a case for follow-up.

Since launch, 88% of interactions with the web form did not result in case creation, which speaks to the efficacy of the Knowledge Articles presented prior to the actual web form.

The web form first appears as an FAQ search bar but will present additional fields to submit a case if the constituent can’t fine the information they need.

A screenshot of the automated messages sent by Mobile Studio – MobileConnect upon opting in. An example of a SMS message sent would be, “Construction in Concourse D begins October 22. Arrive early to navigate detours.”

ACE and Social

Social media is a tremendous tool for customer service, and ACE is tapping into the power of Salesforce Social Studio and Social Studio Automate to support its social media management needs.

We added 26 automation rules that run across the Port’s 6 social accounts for the Seaport and SEA-TAC. Now, incoming social mentions and tags are now automatically labeled with a “New” status to support an organized post cleaning and routing process on the Social Studio front end; this status indicates to ACE staff that the post has not been addressed for service yet. Post labels, like “question about COVID-19” or “complaint about restrooms,” are also assigned to inbound content based on keywords so staff can immediately know exactly what types of matters at hand need attention.

For broader social listening capabilities, we updated and re-configured social listening “Topic Profiles” to allow the Port to see discussions about Sea-Tac airport, as well as complaints and praises for topics such as Port of Seattle cruise lines, commercial fishing in Seattle, and the Port of Seattle brand as a whole.

Social media posts in which SEA-TAC is directly tagged, as well as those identified through social listening, can be sent to Service Cloud and created as a case for service agent attention.

ACE and Mobile

The airport regularly sends SEA Text Alerts notifying travelers of happenings within the airport. In the legacy system, the SMS messages used to be delivered within 1-2 hours of pressing send, but that’s not particularly helpful during time-sensitive travel.

With Salesforce Mobile Studio MobileConnect, these SMS alerts are now delivered in real-time, immediately upon being fired off from Marketing Cloud. That way, travelers are immediately in-the-know of what’s happening in SEA-TAC, from construction updates to airport concession discounts.

Here’s one of the nearly 40 branded email templates we built for the Port to share maritime and aviation news.

A Closer Look at External Relations

ER uses Marketing Cloud to manage opt-ins for, and the creation and distribution of, 31 categories of email newsletters. Similarly, our team migrated over 100,000 subscribers from legacy communications systems into Marketing Cloud.

Synchronization between Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud has been essential. By integrating Marketing Cloud and Service Cloud, our team selected data from Service Cloud into Marketing Cloud to be filtered and segmented for various marketing campaigns and Port communications.

Likewise, in terms of event management, the Port regularly hosts events at and around SEA-TAC and the seaport itself, and our team leveraged Marketing Cloud to support the Port in reconciling invitees, RSVPs, and attendees for Port-led events. Salesforce CloudPages, available in the Web Studio module in Marketing Cloud, are used to build landing pages where external users can RSVP to various Port events. Through Marketing Cloud’s Journey Builder automation tool, the Port can initiate an invitation email allowing users to RSVP to the event, sending them into a “journey” where they will receive reminders, follow-ups, event details, and post-event communications, all personalized to each individual contact based on their behavioral triggers. RSVP and attendance data are stored in both Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud.

Training and Moving Forward

At this time, well over 80 hours of training on Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud have been supplied to the Port of Seattle end users through real-time and recorded sessions. Our teams are currently undertaking Phase 2 of work for Service Cloud and Marketing Cloud.

Digital Transformation that ‘Steels’ the Show

Posted on September 17, 2020

construction crane from the base looking up

The American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) confers certifications to American and international architectural and construction firms, validating that these agencies are authorized to use structural steel in their development of buildings, bridges, and other structures. Garnering these certifications boost firms’ credibility, enabling them to acquire new business.

Catalyst implemented a Salesforce case management and staff-facing portal to support the American Institute of Steel Construction (AISC) in keeping all data related to certifications – from firms’ initial application to audits validating they qualify for certification – centralized in one place. We also integrated the case management backend into the AISC’s website so data regarding certified firms is readily accessible to the public.

The Certification Process

The certification process begins as the interested firm submits an application and application fee to AISC. Upon receiving the application and payment, the AISC then sends an auditor to meet the applicant on-site at their office to go through a certification checklist. The auditor takes their findings back to AISC and makes a determination that will inform the “decision package” to be mailed to the applicant.

If deemed eligible, the firm will receive a certification, while those deemed ineligible will receive a breakdown of problem spots to rectify to improve their chances of certification in the future.

AISC holds the awesome responsibility of ensuring the firms it certifies construct with caution and integrity. For this reason, it typically takes between 5-6 months from the moment of submission to certification, and the firms are audited once a year for certificate renewal.

The Technology Behind the Certifications

Pain Points in the Legacy System

Catalyst began working with AISC as they planned to sunset their legacy software used to house data about certified firms. The software was outdated and did not encompass the full breadth of the certification process listed above. The legacy system only managed the status of application payments and audits; it did not create or maintain auditors’ schedules, nor did it receive the firms’ applications. As a result, AISC turned to Google Sheets, Google Forms, the Microsoft Office Suite, emails, and physical Post-It Notes to supplement the legacy system, minimizing the possibilities for internal collaboration and leaving data strewn about in disparate platforms.

New Workflows, as Facilitated by Salesforce

This web form for applicants sits on the AISC website and is fueled by Salesforce’s web-to-case functionality. All submissions will be routed into Service Cloud.

Throughout seven weeks, we worked with over 30 AISC team members, conducting interviews and facilitating discovery sessions to identify gaps in legacy processes and how Salesforce could close them. The Catalyst team implemented Salesforce Service Cloud and Community Cloud to replace the functionality of the legacy platforms, along with an on-brand and mobile responsive web form that sits on their website to accept firms’ applications and funnel them into Service Cloud. We also installed the Nintex Drawloop document generation tool so AISC could generate certifications and confirmation of payment receipts directly from Service Cloud.

The web form on AISC’s website is dynamic, enabling interested firms to apply for the Fabricator, Erector, or International certifications based on the interests they specify:

Erectors more broadly install, repair, and maintain steel buildings and structures.
Fabricators bend, cut, and mold steel to create beams and columns during builds.
International certifications verify the firms meet the standards needed to build with steel abroad.

This web form routes submissions into Service Cloud, creating a record on the Service Cloud backend for each interested firm.

Salesforce products do not currently manage the actual application fee process, but each applicant’s record on Service Cloud does list a unique payment number. AISC staff manually change the payment status to “Received” and use the Drawloop doc-gen tool to email the applicant a PDF’ed confirmation of receipt directly from Service Cloud.

After an application is submitted using the web form, it’s details populate in a Service Cloud record and inform AISC’s follow-up email to the interested firm.

The Auditor Portal is accessible exclusively to AISC’s auditors and enables them to check what appointments they have scheduled, submit their audit findings (to be synced into the pertinent Service Cloud record), and review past audit reports.

AISC staff also use Service Cloud to manage auditor appointments and schedule their on-site visits. When on-site, auditors use a private portal built on Community Cloud called the “Auditor Portal,” through which auditors can submit their findings.

All data inputted on this Portal syncs to the applicant’s record in Service Cloud, enabling AISC staff to make a final determination about the firm’s eligibility using one platform: Service Cloud. To further reinforce Service Cloud as the new, sole source of truth, Catalyst also migrated data for existing contacts, certified firms, and over 15,000 audit records from the legacy systems into the backend.

If deemed eligible, the firm will receive a certification in the mail generated from Drawloop and housed on their Service Cloud record, as well as information about completing yearly audits to maintain their certification. If deemed ineligible, they will be mailed information about repeating the audit and a breakdown of problem spots as recorded on the Auditor Portal.

The Catalyst team also integrated Service Cloud with the AISC’s website for its Find A Certified Company feature, which allows the public to search for firms within a certain zip code who are certified as at least a Fabricator, Erector, or International Builder. If the firm is listed as an active, eligible certified firm on Service Cloud, it will appear as a search result on this map.

All results pulled back from this search are active certified firms, per the Service Cloud backend.

What Comes Next

The Catalyst team has just commenced Phase 2 with the AISC. We are building a firm-facing Portal through which certified firms can log in, find information specific to their firm’s profile, such as what they are certified in and when each certificate needs renewal, and access exclusive resources the AISC publishes just for members.

Illinois Tollway

Posted on June 21, 2019

The Problem

Established in 1953, the Illinois Tollway system is composed of four major toll roads that stretch across 286 miles of Illinois. On a daily basis the Tollway handles millions of transactions, totaling close to a billion or more annual transactions. They serve over four million customers bringing in over $1 billion in annual revenue. Currently, electronic toll revenue is the core of the business system comprising 85 percent of the Tollway’s revenue. This number will continue to grow exponentially as the Tollway continues to implement all-electronic roads and interchanges.

In the spring of 2014, the Illinois Tollway realized a replacement for its customer service and violation processing system was necessary for this continued, successful growth. The 2005 system no longer supported their goals of reducing operational costs, improving customer service cycle times, and embracing improved customer service policies such as shorter violation notice cycles and dynamic management of fines and settlements. To scale their business both vertically and horizontally, the Tollway received a “best of breed” enterprise back office solution developed by SAP and Accenture called the Accenture Tolling Solution (ATS). With their new solution ready, it was clear that to ensure proper implementation the Tollway needed a solution integrator with technical and business experience implementing and running enterprise-level business applications like the ATS. Without proper implementation, the Tollway’s ability to collect electronic tolls would be jeopardized, leaving their core business and operations at risk.

Our Solution

The Tollway awarded Jacobs Engineering Group (Jacobs) the System Integrator Services contract in conjunction with Catalyst. Together Catalyst and Jacobs provided the Tollway with technical and business experience implementing and running enterprise-level business applications like the ATS to provide oversight and to monitor the post go-live System processing, operational characteristics, user experience, and performance. At the onset of the project, Catalyst placed multiple senior-level consultants and management staff at the Tollway to first learn the ins and outs of its business and establish a strong foundation. Once the team was comfortable with the Tollway’s business operations, they applied their experience in risk management to ensure proper identification, mediation, mitigation, and escalation was applied to any and all issues that arose within the project. Project documentation and meetings implemented by Catalyst on a weekly basis ensured all teams were frequently updated on the status of all project work streams. Catalyst’s flexible customer engagement style established a strong foundation of trust and allowed for the team to easily collaborate with the Tollway to achieve critical project milestones.

During the design, build, and testing phases of the project, Catalyst utilized its most senior infrastructure and application technical resources to provide ample guidance. The team utilized its knowledge of PCI compliance to ensure all network setup and implementation was completed properly and to the highest industry standard. Specifically, Catalyst provided guidance and assessment on the configuration of the VmWare ESX Host and Citrix XenApp. On many occasions the team provided key research, feedback, and knowledge of past experience as it related to database, server virtualization, operational configurations, and maintenance considerations. Specifically, the team provided guidance and assessment on the configuration and implementation of SAP Netweaver, Oracle Golden Gate and 11g/12C, and ATS NetApp and Cisco UCS. Often times this feedback was crucial to the success and continuance of the project.

In providing proper communication, resource utilization, transparency, and collaboration, Catalyst proved to the Tollway it is a trustworthy and long-term partner. Through this engagement, the Tollway and Accenture have both looked to utilize Catalyst in future endeavors. The ATS went live August 2016.

“Catalyst is a wonderful partner for any organization going through significant technological evolution. Their team represents a deep and diverse set of skills and experiences that ensures we always have someone to rely upon for guidance, even when the questions and challenges we have are esoteric and complex. We are grateful for the input and leadership of our Catalyst partners every step of the way”

– Shana Whitehead, Chief of Business of Systems at the Tollway

Chicago Department of Aviation FlyChicago

Posted on June 21, 2019

The Problem

In August of 2011, the Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA) sought support related to IT Application Development and Maintenance as well as IT Networking and Infrastructure. The previous consultant had left the project abruptly, requiring the CDA to issue a Task Order Request (TOR) to find a new company to assume support immediately. Many applications and tasks were included in the TOR, but the largest and most pertinent aspect of the TOR concerned Flychicago.com, the CDA’s public-facing website for O’Hare and Midway International Airports.

The City of Chicago is one of the few metropolitan cities in the United States that has not one, but two airports: O’Hare and Midway International Airports. Both airports are managed by the City of Chicago through the Chicago Department of Aviation (CDA). Together O’Hare and Midway generate more than $45 billion in annual economic activity and create 540,000 jobs for the region, making it an integral part of the City of Chicago. On a daily basis thousands of users access Flychicago seeking important information regarding Chicago’s airport system. With such high traffic, Flychicago is one of the main platforms used by the CDA to communicate with its customers regarding real-time flight delays, traffic alerts, parking rates and availability, recent news, and much more. As such, it was imperative Catalyst assume control and support of the website immediately.

Our Solution

Catalyst developers got to work and began acclimating to the CDA’s environment by learning its main business processes, acquainting themselves with CDA staff, assessing all existing applications, and familiarizing themselves with Sharepoint, the Content Management System (CMS) used to manage Flychicago. In just six weeks the team had assumed full control of Flychicago and began making improvements toward a refined user experience with newly developed applications as well as the development of an updated mobile site. In June of 2014, the CDA requested an overhaul of Flychicago’s content. Catalystcombed through each page within Flychicago and updated the content to include accurate, current information, search engine optimization (SEO) for increased public access, and a consistent voice across all pages.

In November of 2014, the Catalyst team updated the existing mobile site. New pages were added to aid the CDA’s communication with mobile passengers, a new design was implemented for improved user experience, and Google Analytics was set to track all mobile traffic. As a result of the new mobile site’s success, as well as a global increase in mobile use, the CDA contracted Catalyst in January of 2016 to develop a fully responsive, fully redesigned Flychicago. Prior to the redesign the CDA maintained two separate sites, desktop and mobile, making content management difficult and cumbersome. By implementing industry standards and developing a fully responsive website, Catalyst improved maintenance efficiency and overall end user experience. Additionally, the team developed new in-airport maps for both airports integrated with Google Maps utilizing Blue Dot technology. The new maps improve passenger wayfinding within the airports and allow the CDA to promote its many concessions directly to passengers, increasing overall revenue. The new site launched in March of 2017.

Impact & Results

The 2014 content overhaul increased inbound traffic on the desktop version of Flychicago by 50% or 15,000 hits in one year.

The 2014 redevelopment and redesign of Flychicago’s mobile site increased mobile traffic by 633% or 306,144 hits in one year.

On average, Flychicago receives 10,000 visitors a day.

Chicago Department of Finance IVR/OFPC

Posted on April 18, 2019

The Problem

In 2012, the City of Chicago Department of Finance Utility Billing and Customer Service (DoF), in conjunction with the Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) issued a TOR for a re-write of their Online Full Payment Certificate Application. The City of Chicago requires a Full Payment Certificate (FPC) for all real estate transactions. An FPC confirms that the seller of a property has paid their utility bill in full, and its issuance formally moves the seller out of the property utility account and moves the buyer in.

The DoF and DoIT sought to modernize their existing, outdated platform while also making utility data available to title companies and city processors through a web-based platform with incorporated analytics. The outdated application components did not account for future compatibility with multiple browsers, mobile devices, and tablets, and it was not developed using the basic core JEE services compatible with future Java Runtime Environment (JRE) versions. The legacy environment had major flaws and an obsolete technology stack.

Our Solution

Catalyst engineers got to work learning the ins and outs of the real estate transaction and utility billing process, partnering with team leaders to develop an application that not only fit the DoF’s needs, but had the scalability to ensure longevity. The team used Java best practices and application development standards to ensure that the application could be successfully deployed to the City’s WebLogic JEE environment and seamlessly integrate with other City systems.

In addition to developing a responsive bootstrap-based application, Catalyst developed three web services in order to interface with the City’s Banner database and eCheckout application. These integrations facilitated a smooth completion of each FPC application. The completed application utilizes approval paths between title companies, DoF processors, and Water Department

Field Reviewers, and includes the ability to attach supporting documentation to each application, which sped up the application process and removed manual process triggers between the departments. The completed OFPC application was the first application to reside in the City of Chicago’s new Exadata environment, an environment set up to streamline the use of big data in order to better serve the City’s constituents.

Impact & Results

The OFPC application increased the amount of applications completed online from 15% to 87%. The average number of days to process an application reduced from approximately 10 to .93

Approximately 550 field reviews are completed each month through a previously nonexistent field review portal